In my last post, I regrettably linked to the following article written by Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail. I then called him a “wanker” in the footnotes. You may want to read the article itself first to form your own impression…

…before proceeding to the highlighted and annotated version I include below to explain why he is a “wanker”:

If you haven’t connected the dots yet, I highlighted with three main colors to emphasize three different things:

Red: Negative language to color your thinking.

Yellow: Alarmist language to color your thinking.

Green: Self-referential language to color your thinking.

The overall tone of the article can be summed up with: Weshould be afraid ofthis inhuman evil.

Yes, I’m simplifying things.

Yes, I totally nitpicked (and semantically so) his article to hell.

Yes, he can be said to be exercising artistic license.

Yes, I do the same thing. All the time.

Yes, I can be a wanker too.

Anything else?

I get it that this is the Daily Mail we’re talking about here, and that it is Peter Hitchens. But so? This isn’t really about it or about him, this is about who they influence.

The thing is, this is actually a very real problem in China. Peter isn’t entirely wrong. He’s just mostly a self-righteous snooty dick about it. And that breeds more self-righteous snooty dick-ness amongst his people1.

Yes, a traditional (not “prehistoric” nor “ancient”) prejudice persists in China favoring sons over daughters. Yes, this leads to sex-selective abortions of female babies. Yes, child abductions are a problem in certain parts of China. Yes, some of it has to do with the desire for sons or procuring “child brides” for “spoiled” sons. But Peter, here, already lost the plot and conflated two appreciably different phenomenon in mainland China into one genuinely obnoxious narrative of why the Chinese are evil and the rest of us should not just be appalled but oh so afraid.

In fact, Peter did such a good job early on convincing us that China actively hates and “massacres” baby girls in the “tens of millions, using all the latest technology” that by the time you actually get to the human interest part of his piece, we don’t even realize that the Chinese fathers Li Fa Ming and Yuan Ying Shu were both “miserable and demoralized” over their abducted daughters.

Am I supposed to suddenly feel sorry for these fathers or continue hating the whole lot of them for being part of a “disturbing” society that perpetuates “brutal” sexism and “mass slaughter” against baby girls? Am I supposed to pity the ignorant savages or fear the ensuing rise of such unenlightened savages? Am I supposed to hate the Chinese government for its one child policy and suppressing dissent or applaud them for trying to combat that “ancient” traditional prejudice against girl babies? Which is it?

And that underscores — highlights — this entire article’s overriding adherence and ultimate dependence upon popular but tired Western narratives concerning China. This piece is less about reporting what’s going on in China as it is about stringing together as many common and cliched prejudices and fears Westerners have towards China:

China is becoming economically powerful. Check.

This may be China’s “century”. Check.

Chinese people and society are still backward. Check.

There’s a one child policy in China. It’s evil. Check.

Chinese people like sons, abort daughters. That’s evil. Check.

Little emperors. The spoiled brats suck. Check.

There is propaganda in China. Check.

It is sometimes charming. Check.

A lot of terrible shit happens in China. It’s evil shit too. Check.

Chinese leaders are worried about the truth getting out. Check.

They practice censorship in China. That one’s really evil. Check.

Should I go on?

“Look how horrible they are! Oh, but what can we do? They’re going to be the next superpower.”

I would swap “traditional” with “primitive”. How can anyone hate their baby that just because they are female.

I think Kai Pan knows deep down this is an abysmal sin on par with the worst of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. The gendercide has far outpaced Pol Pot and the North Korea’s entire, savage history.

Look up a woman called Ping Fu, she was Inc Magazine’s “entrepreneur of the year” in 2005 or 2006.
She was born in China and as a young reporter in 1980-81 sent by the Politburo to investigate reports of live born baby girls being dumped down wells, necks broken and throats slit.

According to the interview, what she saw and wrote about haunts her to this day and when she submitted her report, she was imprisoned and then sent packing, banished from China and sent to the US as a refugee. Her report demonstrated that the one child policy was an abysmal failure from the start.
Surely after 30 years of wise CCP leadership and the flawless one child policy, there is a far greater shortage of girls than 30 million as of today.

Kai Pan is to busy being one of those “middle ground” pussies to take a stand for anything. Kai Pan is a coward and a panderer to crimes against humanity. Kai Pan needs his ass kicked, preferably by Asian women, especially those whose families came over from China at some point and thus may have saved their lives.

Then what’s the point of even writing this post? I mean is it China/Div’s job to go around pointing out all the specific “biases” of every article written on China? This obsession with pointing out bias really only serves obfuscate real issues like gender bias that should be publicized and discussed. To me, this approach stifles debate more so than encourages it. Take a stand on the issues, if the article is misleading then do some real research and prove his claims wrong. Otherwise your response amounts to that of a middle schooler who just learned the term “bias” and tries to use it to win every argument. Kai turns every debate about a China issue into a debate about media bias which is counter-productive if not completely puerile…ok I’m done “trolling” (i.e. China/div’s term for disagreeing with/criticizing a post) now…

Have you ever wondered why some people see “the point” but others don’t?

No, it isn’t china/divide’s “job to go around pointing out all the specific “biases” of every article written on China”, it’s just what some of us want to write about at certain times. We read something that we feel compelled to respond to. Just. Like. What. You’re. Doing. Right. Now.

I have an idea! Let’s write ANOTHER snarky reply to a Western news take on a China topic. If we attempt to discredit the people publicizing issues like this by implying that they are “China bashers”, then we will be sure save a few more females from abortion or neglect.

It is ALWAYS a good idea to ignore the core issues and debate whether the author writing about those issues is “biased” or not. This is what being a “middle-grounder” is all about! Derailing debate (and making yourself look “smart”) through accusations of bias…

Kai, I’m sorry but you are a one trick pony man…I mean why spend all this effort to point out the “bias” of the author’s artistic license? If you disagree with him, then give us a real rebuttal of his claims. Or if you agree, but disagree with the tone, please show us how YOU would re-write this article to discuss the issue WITHOUT being so “China bash-y”…I would seriously like to see an example of this “balanced” tone you accuse so many Western reporters of lacking…how does China’s image come out of a discussion of the atrocities of gender bias unscathed? And does pulling punches to “balance” the tone really accomplish any better results? (besides maybe saving us from another famous Kai “Western media bias” rant…)

I have an idea! Let’s write ANOTHER snarky reply to a Western news take on a China topic. If we attempt to discredit the people publicizing issues like this by implying that they are “China bashers”, then we will be sure save a few more females from abortion or neglect.

Fenqing are also good at this. It’s called “conflating”. Taking issue with bias does not mean I’m against saving females from abortion or neglect. I can be against both at the same time. You should try holding two thoughts in your head at the same time.

It is ALWAYS a good idea to ignore the core issues and debate whether the author writing about those issues is “biased” or not. This is what being a “middle-grounder” is all about! Derailing debate (and making yourself look “smart”) through accusations of bias…

Wrong, I am not ignoring the core issues, I am just not writing about the issue you think should be the only one written about. The core issue here, in this instance, is about bias. This does not preclude other issues from being core issues in other instances, in other pieces of writing. A writer, like Peter can be both biased and concerned with female infantcide. Pointing out that he is biased does not necessarily mean he isn’t concerned with female infantcide. It just means he’s biased.

How are my accusations of bias any different from your accusations of me making myself look smart?

Kai, I’m sorry but you are a one trick pony man…

What made you ever think I have a problem with being a one-trick pony man?

I mean why spend all this effort to point out the “bias” of the author’s artistic license?

Since you don’t accept the actual reasons why, I’ll just have to settle for: To annoy you?

If you disagree with him, then give us a real rebuttal of his claims.

Wait a second. What do you think I disagree with him on? Maybe you should try figuring that out first.

Or if you agree, but disagree with the tone, please show us how YOU would re-write this article to discuss the issue WITHOUT being so “China bash-y”

You’re not following your own advice. You’ve responded to your own criticism here.

I would seriously like to see an example of this “balanced” tone you accuse so many Western reporters of lacking

Let’s start with going easy with everything that was highlighted in red?

how does China’s image come out of a discussion of the atrocities of gender bias unscathed?

What makes you think I’m concerned with China’s image on gender bias here?

And does pulling punches to “balance” the tone really accomplish any better results?

That’s the age-old debate of the “divide”, isn’t it? Do you think everyone reacts the same way to the same stimulus? Do you think the same trick always yields the same reactions?

(besides maybe saving us from another famous Kai “Western media bias” rant…)

I still remember how upset you were on ChinaGeeks. We understand that you’re sensitive to this type of issue, just like fenqing are to other types. That’s normal. You’re normal. It just sucks that you can’t see how I’m normal too.

That aside…I find folks get so bent out of shape regarding media bias, especially within the context of China. Many like to wear their identification of ‘bias’ as some kind of badge that gives them street cred in the world of internet pundits.

To be dreadfully frank…media bias exists in every country, on every topic and for a very, very long time. It’s a phenomenon…it’s just there. Deal with it?

Bryan, not sure I agree. How many people tell Western pundits to just “deal with it” when it comes to Chinese media bias? Bias does exist everywhere, and the identification of such will likely continue so long as people react to and resist it, right?

To what end? It’s somewhat of a futile effort, I believe. Where is the value-added in identifying what most of us already know?

By “deal with it” I was more referring to bias as being an inheritress trait of journalism, opinion and work/life in general. We struggle a lot with ideas of bias in academic research. One can minimize it using all kinds of methodologies, but it’s hard, if not impossible to eliminate completely. It’s just “there” and one cannot proceed unless they recognize that (preferably in a short paragraph).

Bryan, lots of things are futile efforts yet we make them anyway, right? The world will forever be unfair, but many of us fight it still.

If I believed this is something that “most of us already know”, I probably wouldn’t be identifying it, would I? That’s probably a key disagreement between us.

I don’t think I’ve said anything that suggests that I don’t understand bias is an inherent trait of journalism, opinion, and work/life in general. In fact, I think I’ve said plenty to acknowledge that explicitly. There are indeed all kinds of methodologies to minimize bias. This is one of them. I harbor no illusions about eliminating it completely. That’s not my goal. I’m not that stupid.

I’m glad this article points out “In China, it is the relaxation of the (one child) policy, rather than the policy pure and simple, which explains the unnatural upsurge in the number of boys”. This sentence, however, is buried deep in the middle of a long article.

The same Economist in the same breath also produced a shorter therefore more powerful piece that concludes “Most obviously China should scrap the one-child policy”. Why isn’t it so obvious to me?

The way the Daily Mail article is written rouses fear and hatred for China and reading the obvious bias it makes the Chinese mad as hell as well.

Then we all go to war and no more Chinese gender imbalance! Oh … no more Western men … that will also solve the financial crisis, current implosion of the Western economy, world hunger and ultimately bring about world peace!

Pete Hitchens is my fucking hero. I read the article last week. He went a bit over the top when he started going paranormal and shit but he hit it right on the nail. For people who don’t know or don’t care to know this is a big attention grabber that obviously didn’t get ignored. His way of delivery was direct and intentional on every corner of the way.

That’s just the thing Kai. If they wanna be the next supper power they gotta be nice to their own people and the rest of world. Have you ever noticed a certain bully country always pisses and moans about unfair treatment with a hidden agenda (Where are the MWDs). Not many people mind a super power on the rise long as they are nice guys. It would suck if they had some serious influence on the rest of the world. Pete Hitchens can really start some fires and push his agenda to a majority of people in powerful spots. Next thing you know there is a war starting to save China’s humanity meanwhile its really a fight over something else like the massive amount of Gold (hypothetically speaking). Maybe simple people like us can’t do anything, but you have seen some fucked up shit in the past 20 years to make you think, “wow that was not called for.”(hypothetically speaking again)It just takes the right backing and series of events that lead up to an international intervention, and “presto” no more “gendercide”.

I don’t see Pete trying to create a movement like this from his article,but he does have a job to do.

Peter hitchens is only surpassed by his older and lamer brother in terms of hyperbole and British attitude. F***ing English wankers… someone should ban all English from traveling abroad, just the worst culture in the world, hands down. China for all its problems has much much nicer people. The English are just plain downright nasty. And English newspaper of course cater this audience, so why even care?

There’s a difference in trying to deflect your own failures by pointing out (and exaggerating) other people’s problems with a nasty tone.

Reporter: Today, in America’s ongoing financial cri-
Reporter2: WAIT! LOOK AT WHAT CHINA IS DOING! GENDERCIDE! POLLUTION! CURRENCY MANIPULATION! ARMS BUILD UP! THEY KILLED COPENHAGEN! GENOCIDE IN DARFUR IS ALL THEIR FAULT! THEY’RE EATING TIBETAN CHILDREN! ALL CHINESE PEOPLE ARE RACIST, LOOK AT THAT ONE BLOG POST ABOUT LOU JING! CHINESE ARE ROUNDING UP BLACKS IN BEIJING! LIP SYNCHING! CHINA IS CRACKING DOWN ON PURE AND INNOCENT TIBETANS! CHINA IS CRACKING DOWN ON NOBLE ARYAN UIGHURS!

Jesus what a moron that Peter guy. A real wanker indeed, I don’t know how you have the patience to go through his whole article.

What does he think, that in the West we don’t massacre babies with the latest technologies as well? At least in China they did it for a good reason, to avoid the immense population disaster that was sure to come if things continued like in the 70s.

I suppose Peter is much more happy with countries like Congo where population is not controlled and the excess of people is eliminated with AIDS and machete wars. But then, those countries don’t matter because they are not strong enough to contest our hegemony and take away our jobs…

Julen, to be fair, Peter’s not talking about simply abortion, but sex-selective abortion, massacring baby girls with the latest technologies. That is something that is far less pervasive in the West. Moreover, the abortion he’s referring to China is less to do with population control than it is about preferring sons to daughters. I have no qualms with his disagreement over such a prejudice but I do have qualms with his reporting.

But excuse me Kai, perhaps you can explain me how it is is less disgusting to kill your foetus without knowing its sex, just because it is “oh not so convenient for you to have a baby at this time” – vs to kill the foetus because you prefer to have a son rather than a daughter. Both are using technology to suit the particular preferences of a selfish mother (one a preference of time, another of gender).

Indeed there is a problem with some Chinese people preferring sons over daughters and paying for abortions but we must keep in mind:

1- people that do that are a minority of about 3% of the couples in China. 2- It is not in itself more immoral than Western abortion practices, even if the long-term consequences may (only may) be worse.

Whoa, Julen, I’m not saying it is less disgusting to kill your fetus without knowing its sex. Why should I have to explain something I’m not advancing? I haven’t said anything to be pro- or anti-abortion at all here. Totally agree that abortion involves using technology. I’m not commenting about Chinese sex-selective abortions being more or less “immoral” than Western abortion practices. I just thought you were criticizing Peter for something I’m not sure he represents in his article and was clarifying, again, “to be fair” (to the wanker).

OK, the main focus of the article is not the one child policy, but it does touch it. And I think it is important to make these points again, for all the preachers of anti-one-child policy.

Now, regarding the traditional preference of Chinese people for sons rather than daughters: Yes, it is potentially a source of social problems and the government does its best to discourage it.

But let’s keep in mind the percentage of couples who push this to the extreme of selective abortion is tiny. And what does Mr. Hitchens want, all societies have vices and you cannot judge the whole for what a 3% of them are doing.

Otherwise we could all write articles about how English are fascist hooligans, or Arabs are terrorists, or Americans are nutty serial shooters. But then, I guess that is precisely what people like Peter Hitchens do for a living.

Sorry Julen but I’ll have to disagree with you on that.
sex selective abortions in China aren’t about the individual choice of one woman or the other, but about social prejudice against women that creates enormous pressure on couples to have a son. In that sense it is more immoral because its not about the mother’s choice and is both derives from and promotes discrimination of women in cosiety.
I don’t know where you took the 3% figures from. All sex selcetive abortions are ilegal in China, so naturally it’s hard to come by any real statistics – in regions such as Hainan it’s probably a lot higher than 3%., and then there are the girl who aren’t aborted but abondened after birth.
Just because that Hitchens person is a wanker doesn’t mean the problem is not real. Also, I don’t see how it’s helpful to debate “who is more evil”. Gendercide in China (and elsewhere, like India) is something that should be pointed out and should get a lot more attention in both the local and intenational media. Not in the way Hitchens is doing it, obviously but it should. “Western women have abortions too” is not a valid argument against pointing out the problem. Is the massacre in darfur justified because there are murders being commited in the west?

Sex selective abortions in China aren’t about the individual choice of one woman or the other, but about social prejudice against women that creates enormous pressure on couples to have a son.

I agree it is not just the “choice of a woman”, as I said. But it is still the selfish choice of a family. Social prejudice doesn’t *force* anyone to abort in China, on the contrary, it could be argued that there is a growing incentive to have girls. I know I am in delicate territory here, but I am pretty sure many abortions are not a wife-beating husband forcing her, but just a mother who voluntarily prefers to have a son.

In that sense it is more immoral because its not about the mother’s choice and it both derives from and promotes discrimination of women in society.

How much the mother takes part of the decision? Probably more in the West than here, but it is not black and white. Many abortions in the West are due to social pressure as well, many others are just due to irresponsibility. In the end, following Peter’s notion of morality, the “ghosts of the dead children” float in the Western classes as well as in the Chinese ones.

I don’t know where you took the 3% figures from. All sex selcetive abortions are ilegal in China, so naturally it’s hard to come by any real statistics – in regions such as Hainan it’s probably a lot higher than 3%., and then there are the girl who aren’t aborted but abandened after birth.

Yes, but I am an engineer and I do this for a living :) The Mail says there will be 30M excess guys in 2020. Since selective abortion has close to a 100% success rate, 30M guys exceeding average should correspond to 30M manipulated births. Now how many births happened between 1978 and 2020: around half of the Chinese population, 700M. So OK, that gives a 4% of manipulated births. But bear in mind I took the initial basis of 30M from the wingnuts of the Daily Mail, so this is a worst case scenario estimate, including the abandones ones.

Just because that Hitchens person is a wanker doesn’t mean the problem is not real. […]“Western women have abortions too” is not a valid argument against pointing out the problem.

I completely agree with this. The problem is when you approach these problems like Peter does, with that old Western moralizing tone. This is not helping at all, and it begs to be reminded of Western crimes as well to give readers some perspective. Obviously Peter is not writing this for the oppressed Chinese women, but for his righteous, jingoistic crowd of admirers.

other notes
1) prenatal untrasound is forbidden in china, but it is not difficult to get illegal scan. the health industry in china is as corrupted (and as $-oriented) as the government
2) abandoned girls (assuming they survive, and remain in china) do not reduce the female percentage. but girls subsequently adopted by foreiegn families do.

Your writing is usually very good and clear on it’s own, Kai. Pedantry and righteousness.. there is enough of that in the China blogosphere, and if there isn’t, at least make a much better go of it. It’s a turn off to have someone assume he is so much sharper than his readers that he needs to result to what appears to be a rainbow-hued version of all caps.

That almost seems like a parody of the self-righteous blogger, nevermnd that I agree with your thrust completely.

When you’ll created this blog, I hoped to see some really original and sharp writing, not an extension of the “easy target” editorializing theme from Chinageeks.

Thanks for the compliment. You’re like one of two people who think my writing is good and clear on its own. As for “pedantry and righteousness”, both criticisms I’ve heard before. I didn’t highlight because I assume I’m “so much sharper” than my readers, I highlighted because it was more efficient and easier than copying, pasting, and blockquoting the parts of the original article I want to comment on. It’s easier to use colors to highlight and link parts of the original under the criticisms I have. If you’re familiar with the way I respond to things, as I suspect you are, you know I’m big on quoting and referencing the original text to make my points. That’s my style.

I’m glad you agree with the thrust of my post.

We have original and sharp writing too. Maybe this just isn’t one of them for you. Either way, this may have been an easy target, but it’s also a target that is influential. For a blog about the divide between China and the West, I think this is squarely within our subject-matter.

It’s sad to think about what a good article this could have been. It seems like he did quite a lot of research on the ground, talking to lots of different people, getting some good pics (minus him looking so “concernedly” into the camera). If he would have written without using so much obnoxious language, this could have been a good, thoughtful piece that could have educated people on the problem without being such a douchebag about it. I especially like the last little punch at the end where he mentions “the pinched squalor of the places” – wait a sec, I thought this was about gender imbalance?

There’s a fundamental difference that is overlooked in some of the comments about media bias: Chinese media bias is a wholesale and imposed reflection of the Government’s propagandised view of themselves and the world. However, ‘western’ media bias exists in the retailing of the individual outlet that forms a part of the whole, which, on balance, is nothing like the skewed hotbed of Sino-negativity that it is too often presented as being.

A small case in point. You can write an op-ed condemning American foreign/economic policy for the NYT (for example) and get it published, but you can’t write a condemnation of Chinese foreign/economic policy for the CD and come close to publication or discussion within the Chinese media.

On this level, there’s simply no comparison.

Of course, articles like the one taken to task here are always going to exist where media has some freedom; that comes with the territory. But it doesn’t make them representative, which cannot be said of a state controlled media.

The West’s sickening, idiotic media might be an “option”, but it’s an option forced not only on the citizens of the West, but of the whole world.

China doesn’t even attempt to brainwash the entire planet.

The West’s foul, ugly, filthy lies about China outnumber truthful and honest reporting 100 to 1. When a majority of your nation deeply despises all of the Chinese peoples and their cultures, and wishes for them to suffer and fail, well, propaganda sells. And profit is the only thing that matters to these corporations.

China’s media is generally taken with a grain of salt by the majority of PRC citizens. In practice, it’s not much of a threat.

Lastly, the Western media systematically fucks the West itself and the world by trying to sell anti-intellectualism and constantly trying to market obscenity and instant-gratification media for imbeciles.

So which part of the retailer business makes you think the retail garbage is optional? Yes you may have the choice to shop in either Wal-Mart or Target or Tesco or Sainsbury or your street corner grocery stores and you may have quite a lot more choices there than that in the wholesale boxes like Costco or Sam’s club. But you have a better chance to buy less garbage? Do you have any hard evidence for that, such as, 57% people have negative views on the national news media?

stuart, definitely agree that some people don’t appreciate the difference between the bias enforced by the Chinese government in Chinese media versus the genuine bias of individuals in the Western media.

No one is suggesting that mere existence makes something representative. However, some people ARE saying that they believe SUCH articles are arguably representative of western media. More importantly, just as state-sponsored and enforced bias influences people, western media bias influences people as well EVEN in the presence of alternative views or biases.

The fundamental point in contention here when people point out Western bias is usually to disabuse some Westerners of the notion that the greater availability of a plurality of views in the West automatically makes them less biased or necessarily less susceptible to being influenced by bias. The common example is the Westerner dismissing the Chinese as being necessarily brainwashed while they themselves are inherently free of such an affliction. That’s just not true. It is one thing to argue about the merits of access to a plurality of views, and another thing entirely to argue about whether one person is biased or not. The former does not exclude the latter, but some people often mistakenly think it does and present it as so.

This, above, is a huge obstacle between China and the West, between many Chinese and Westerners. We aren’t going to build any mutual understanding if one side is always assumed to be brainwashed and the other hypocritically thinking they can be nothing but free-thinkers. Why do you think I like The Last Psychiatrist? Because he’s always making his readers question what they think is their own thoughts and beliefs.

I haven’t really familiarised myself with The Last Psychiatrist beyond your links. But I’m all for challenging assumptions and pushing boundaries, so I’ll go lie on the couch for a while, see how it feels.

What is it with China bloggers? Why do you get so arsy about journalists who write about China? I know you like to think it’s “your patch” because you can read Chinese, but have you considered that you lack all expertise in (a) being a decent journalist and (b) knowledge about what writing works for that particular British readership?
hitchens has skills to bring to the table, and the article is effective – and not nearly as biased as it looks to you through your “I know more about China than you” spectacles. What you read as inconsistency, the journalistic trade knows as balance.
Someone linked to an Economist article and claimed it did the same job without sensationalism: did you not notice the shocking account of infanticide in the first two paragraphs? I found that pretty damn sensational.
I’m with AndyR. 1) get over yourself. 2) engage in the debate.
As someone said above, you are a good writer. Your talents are wasted on this gibber.

Hitchens might write like the angels for all I know, we don’t give a damn about his writing skills here. The point is the content of his post is severely biased against China. That is the reason why many of us often critical with China turn defensive in this post.

I agree there are many knowledgable people out of the China blogs that we should pay attention, but no, most of them are not journalists. And no, Peter H is certainly not one of them.

Now, I do agree Kai’s talents are wasted on this gibber. No bad feelings Kai, but really I think you can choose more nuanced and less obviously idiotic articles to comment on, otherwise this becomes mere collection of rants, and we end up speaking more about an English nobody called Peter H than about China.

I agree with them that this article is a bit over-the-top. The guy obviously has it in for the place.

However, yeah, it’s hard to find an article that they (foreign internet blog-about-China-gers) like or approve of. Have you ever noticed some foreigners who are kind of…possessive of China? Like they get upset if, say, someone claims to have been there longer, or experienced more of the REAL people and culture? Been to more small villages and learned more words for random, rare gimmicky traditional dishes? I knew several of them. I think maybe it’s somehow related. Not with THIS article…but with a lot of others.

I do statistics for a living and I am always surprised at how easily people are manipulated by statistics. But this is a case where a proper understanding of statistics clears things up and exposes the manipulation.

Genetically, the probability of a giving birth to a male and the probability of giving birth to a female are both equal to 0.50. But due to environmental (both in the womb and out of the womb) factors the reality is a bit different. In the USA records show that male babies are born at a slightly higher rate than are females. The probability of a male birth in the USA is 0.52 and the probability of a female birth is 0.48. You may not think that this is a big deal, but when you talk about many births it becomes a big deal.

So there should be around 2% more male births than female births. This is in the USA, and the factors involves many things like chemicals/germs/viruses in the environment, how the mother treats her body, etc. They are not necessarily abortion or she-murdered-her-baby related (which is always assumed to be the case when the West judges China).

Anyway, assuming this difference holds in China, along with the data given in this article, there should be approximately (1,336,410,000)(.02)=26,728,200 more male births than female births in China, or around 30 million. Amazing how statistics works huh? Is it a coincidence that these numbers are so close together?

It has also been shown that in the past missionaries from the West in China have lied about the rates of infanticide in order to better spread the Jesus-myth around and make the non-Christian Chinese look bad.

I am not saying that cases of infanticide do not exist, but there is a lot of evidence to support the claim that the rates of infanticide in China are exaggerated.

And to prove the anti-China, pro-West propaganda is involved, try to find an article that blames the male to female birth discrepancy in the USA on infanticide in the USA.

Check the comment I did above about stats. I am not a statistician, but I am an engineer, and my job is to estimate what I don’t understand :)

Seriously though, there is a flaw in your calculation. You cannot use 2% of the population, you should use 2% of the number of births that happened since the problem started circa 1978. This number is much smaller than the Chinese population, I estimated it above to 700M, but even that is probably too high.

Your 2% should probably amount to: 500M*0.02 = 10M

This leaves an excess of 20 million males that would correspond well with my own estimation of 3% cases. Of course, it is silly to start splitting hairs about this, because the basis data is not sound, and we don’t know the accuracy of the “30 million” estimation in the first place.

But a fair conclusion is that the phenomenon of gender abortions is very minoritary, in the order of few points percent.

Clarification: the reason why I say that you can’t take the 2% stat on the whole population is that that data is based only on births.

For various reasons, that advantage of males is equalized or even reversed when you take into account the whole of the population. See the maps that Kai posted in the previous post, where you see there are in fact more total women than men in every country including the US, except China.

no, your denominator shoul dnot be 1.3bn, it should be something around 13M/yr of new born baby. so the normal bias of male baby should have been .02*13M/yr or .26M/yr.
say, (according to economists), selective abortion (of the ultrasound/nmot-so-safe kind) starts in 1990. this give 20 yrs of surplus men, means 30M/20=1.5M/yr, significantly larger than the 0.26M/yr “normal” biase.

re: christine — it is unsafe selective abortion with ultrasound (which is not really that hi-tech), see the economist article.

this is actually a worldwide problem. china isn’t alone or the first. but it is one of the worst case due to the one child policy. but stats in india shows that the same was done even without the one-child policy.

Ah… but you see no one in the western world views India as a threat, India is a democrazy you see ;) But the fact is that India is too messed up. China is the ideal bogeyman, it is easy to tell the rednecks that chinks got all the factory jobs that should be theirs.

Anyone who is slightly informed of reproductive technologies will not continue reading Hitchens’ article after the introductory paragraph.

What are “all the latest technology?” Amniocentesis? Ultrasound abortion? or (enhanced) abortifacient? By using the generic and scientifically indiscriminating term “scanning machines”, I bet Hitchens did not do his homework to check what he is reporting.

Hitchens, like most commentators on the extreme gender imbalance in China, jumped to the conclusion that the sex-selective abortion in China is caused by some forms of Western-imported imagining technology (advocated by the evil feminists who are too selfish to consider the rights of the unborn) distortedly used by the unenlightened Chinese women to kill female fetuses. He took the efficacy of utero sex determination for granted, and is obviously uninformed of the complexity associated with sex-selective abortion.

Utero sex determination is highly unlikely during the first trimester of pregnancy, which is the period for safe and legal abortion. And the difficulty in determining prenatal sex I am talking about is associated with the more accurate and expensive amniocentesis used in private hospitals in developed countries. I suspect the challenge is much higher with the use of rickety ultrasound machines operated by inexpert nurse that Hitchens implied are widespread in China. It is possible (but implausible) that pregnant women can get an unsafe, illegal, forcibly enacted abortion during the second or third trimester periods, putting her health, reproductive capacity and life at great risk. At the end of the day, sex-selective abortion is not a reliable explanation for the shortage of female babies. In fact, it is quite possible that almost as many male fetuses (healthy ones) could have been aborted as females.

This is why Hitchens turned to child abduction and police corruption and many other factors to reinforce his claim. He simply cannot finish his story without digressing to the circumstantial factors. It’s not even a matter of media bias. We see the world through our colored lens, but a sensible adult knows how to align existing evidence with his/her bias to confuse people. Hitchens began his article with “all the latest technology” and ended with the weeping of female ghosts. What is it? A new form of science fiction with the unconventional marriage of newfound technology and underworld spirit?

Right Christine. So what makes you think it is implausible for Chinese women to get an abortion after 6 months? What they do is illegal anyway, so what does it matter if they do it after 6 months and then ensure success?

The problem with your argument is that you are actually supporting Peter’s thesis rather than refuting them. That is, if the ratio of success of selective abortions is so low as you claim, then it means the only explanation for the 30Million extra males is that Hundreds of Millions of couples actually tried to do it.

This would mean that selective abortion is very common practice in society, something that I find hard to believe. But then, I don’t completely exclude it either, it would be interesting to have more objective data.

@Zuo Ai
While I don’t claim any expertise on the subject of abortion and reproductive technologies, I do think my comment is of some values to explicating some of the issues that are misconstrued and misrepresented by biased journalists and the uninformed, careless masses like you. I don’t like to get personal here, but you are discrediting my civil capacity and intellectual competence over an issue that you obviously failed to understand any better than I do. The ignorant attitude you exuded in your vacuous writing renders any logical follow-up on my part unworthy and unnecessary.

@Julen
First, I don’t see supporting Hitchens’ thesis as a problem simply because it is his idea––the low level of ad hominem attack does not interest me. If you don’t like him, fine, but don’t count me in your team.

My concerns with his writings are twofold. First, his rationale in explaining the gender demographic imbalance is incoherent and arbitrary. At the beginning of the article, he singled out “all the latest technology” as the culprit behind the lopsided gender distribution. Not only is this hypothesized correlation unclearly articulated, he does not understand the variety, technical difficulty and mechanism of “technologies” involved in abortion. The first point I want to make is that a basic grasp of the complexity of abortion technologies is necessary before we self-righteously jump into the battleground of extremes: pro-life or pro-choice; sinophiles or sinophobes. These simplistic dichotomies, encouraged by outspoken (but usually stupid) opponents and proponents on women’s/fetus’s rights, China’s triumph/bias without understanding what is really at stake is what I seek to counter.

Secondly, there is a logical discrepancy in your critique. How does the scientifically low success rate of safe, legal sex-selective abortion at the early stage of pregnancy lead to your conclusion that “the only explanation for the 30Million extra males is that Hundreds of Millions of couples actually tried to do it”? You are speculating on the statistical probability of attempted illegal sex-selective abortion from my account of the scientific mechanism of safe, legal sex-selective abortion. You see the slippage here?

The reason that illegal sex-selective abortion is not a credible explanation for the gender imbalance is that women’s reproductive capacity is one of the most fundamental factors directly dictating the genetic success of the human species. It is counter-intuitive and self-destructive (not to even mention anti-Darwinian) for a widespread practice of illegal selective abortion that tremendously impairs a woman’s reproductive capacity over an uncertain abortion. Depending on the fetal position and the thickness of the woman’s abdominal skin etc, reliable amniocentesis detection can be delayed as far as the 30-36 week of pregnancy, assuming that the equipment functions perfectly. The woman, her husband or the whole family might not care about an aborted fetus, but they sure care about the reproductive success of the family. Under the monogamous contract, stigma associated with divorce, and the shortage of females, it is simply unlikely that illegal sex-selective abortion is widely practiced to the extent that it can satisfactorily explain the picture of gender imbalance in China.

An alternative explanation can be drawn from history. Historically, in China as in Europe there is a preference for not making a sharp distinction between abortion and infanticide, esp. with female infants. Infanticide is not very different from “postnatal abortion” or “delayed abortion”. How so? Well, at times of famines or economic hardship, denying life to a newborn is considered as moral because it relieves the economic burden on the family and so forth. Again, female infanticide might not be the smoking gun here. It is also possible that the one-child policy triggers a systematic under-reporting of baby girls in remote rural areas where a family with 5 children born after the 80s is not uncommon.

while all your reasonable are reasonable and plausible, it is widely believed that selective abortion (via ultrasound) is the main reason for the gender imbalance in many asian countries, including china.
one supporting evidence (u r right that there is no conclusive evidence/stats yet) is the coincidence of cheaply available ultrasound machines and the timing of the male baby % surge in early 1990s. 9see the economist article)

@Christine- Sure, you are right about the low level attack on Peter H, although if you are so purely minded you probably chose the wrong place. This is clearly a Peter H bashing post.

Seriously though, I still don’t get what you are saying. It would help if you go down to the numbers and provide a clear explanation of WHY there is an obvious gender imbalance in China and WHY this is the only country in the World where it happens.

No disrespect, but all post sounds like blah blah blah and you are just not giving a plausible explanation for that phenomenon. The only one you are giving is ” one-child policy triggers a systematic under-reporting of baby girls in remote rural areas where a family with 5 children born after the 80s is not uncommon.”

I don’t think this is very plausible. Sure there are remote places, and some minorities have 5 children, I have met some Hui in that case and wrote about it before. But that could NEVER account for the millions of imbalance, because the bulk of the Chinese population is either 1-having single child or 2- having two kids and reporting it.

@ sun bin
What should I be persuaded just because it is coming from the Economist? Maybe you should read my comment on the previous post on the mating prospect of Chinese male based on a study reported on the Economist. Their ideology is simply running against my own. On this issue, I can find you a number of counter-studies to the contrary of the formula suggested by the Economist (see Sex Ratio Patterns in the Indian Population: A Fresh Exploration by Agnihotri for example). But it’s easier for a die-hard fan of the Economist to favor an article computed with compiled data from Western-dominated organizations than an academic volume by an Indian scholar. This is where you and I part. I have my own bias and so do you.

@Julen
I’m getting more annoyed at your condescending attitude in discarding my response without even reading it. SERIOUSLY, I tried to explain to you how your snappy judgement on the widespread practice of illegal, unsafe, scientifically uncertain sex-selective abortion from my account on the totally opposite side of the issue is logically fraught. Then I also SERIOUSLY pointed out that it is to the genetic disadvantage of the Chinese family to perform such a service on a large scale. You did not show any comprehension and digestion of the above materials.

I am blah blah blah? If you are too lazy to get through the text, please keep your incompetence and illiteracy to yourself. You like to use imprecise figures and inexact numbers to represent yourself, it’s your style. I don’t see why I should not stick to my (sometimes lengthy) style and I certainly don’t think it justifies your hegemonic attempt to invalidate my style and credibility, esp. when you failed to address the merits of my ideas.

you wrote “and provide a clear explanation of WHY there is an obvious gender imbalance in China and WHY this is the only country in the World where it happens.”

I don’t subscribe to the explanation provided by the Economist, but at least I inspected it cursorily before I responded to sun bin. You, on the other hand, simply exhibited a “dyslexia + disrespect” symptom because you haven’t read the Economist article have you? Or you wouldn’t be naive enough to imply that “gendercide” and skewed sex ratio is unique to China.

On the plausibility of under-reporting and under-registration, I think the reason provided by BMJ is more convincing (read it yourself!) than your random conjecture. I don’t have enough data on the Chinese case to comment ATM, but I do know that in the Indian case, Agnihotri argued strongly against the idea that low FMR (female to male ratio) at birth is sufficient to explain gender imbalance because of the different childhood stages for sex-selective intervention in India. See his Sex Ratios Pattern.

Finally, unless you can come up with a respectful feedback demonstrating your willingness and capacity to engage in a civilized and constructive conversation, I don’t want to waste any more of time and energy on an asymmetrical exchange in which you unjustly disregard my genuine position with your presumptuous register and your flawed logic and impaired writing/reading ability!

1- No, I hadn’t read the Economist article, I have now, and I have answered below.

2- I don’t play with the numbers as you seem to imply. You can challenge my math at any moment — this being said my initial estimate was based on wrong data, and I have no problem to review that.

3- Based on the Economist data, China is the single country where gender imbalance is by far the worst. I am not going to follow you picking on words (OK I said the “only”, I should have said “the worst”). But I would ask you to try to explain this instead of writing long long blah blah blah trying to call me names. I am too old for that :)

While I agree with your point that sex selective abortion is dangerous and unreliable, it’s not quite convincing to assume that people won’t do it. The BMJ data quoted by the economist indicates that the sex ratio of the first born in China is not too far from the average, but the second born is way too high. Imaging the couple in the situation. They want the healthiest baby in their first try. After that they want the boy at the cost of the wife’s reproduction health, because they figure they’re not going to have babies after that anyway so that may be the risk they are willing to take.

A midwife friend of mine had told me all kinds of crazy stories. There are quite some extreme things these women are willing to do to get a boy. She certainly have told everyone of them they’ve been stupid but they did it anyway. Empirical seems to indicate that, sex selective abortion, if not the only reason for the irregular sex ratio, at least contribute to it.

I don’t think this is question of pro-life or pro-choice, as often these discussions have been channeled to. Risking be politically incorrect, I can use the same flamboyant language to say 50 millions or more retards, disabilities, and future criminals have been aborted too.

@Sam
Yes, empirically it is possible that people will do irrational things no matter what, and I’ve heard anecdotes from ob-gyn practitioners in Chinese hospitals about all means and tricks the male-longing mum want to be done on them just to get a son. But is it plausible that this is happening on a large scale? Empirically I don’t know. Theoretically it can’t be true in the long run (anti-Darwinian). Given that long-term generalizable data on illegal, unreliable sex-selective abortion is not available any time soon, the theoretical perspective is noteworthy. My intent in the first reply is to interrogate the common-sensicle assumption that sex-selective abortion is possible now just because the (western-imported, effective and precise) technology is there.

about the battlefield in binary oppositions. Unfortunately, most people do tend to get wedded in one of these camps without understanding what they get themselves into. (Just look at some of the comments above for imputing women’s movement in instituting abortion, thereby forcing us to go for either “pro-life” or “pro-(women) choice”). The eugenic benefits of abortion are not new. The former prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew and nazi leaders are aware of the potential of race-selective, merit-enhancing dimension of reproductive technologies.

@Christine
First, the above comment was directed toward Kai, not you. I dunno if it posted as a reply to your comment or what, but I was not at all talking to you.

Second, I was saying it in a joking manner, so I’m surprised you got all serious on me (especially since I was talking to Kai).

Third, from reading your response, you also seem to talk too much to get a point across. Its cool, we all do sometimes. I actually found the choice of adjectives you used to describe me to reveal some adjectives about you:

arrogant, defensive, likes to use “vacuous” and “ad hominem” as often as humanly possible, in a manner which just seems contrived

Don’t take it the wrong way, these adjectives can help you concisely describe yourself. You could even use them in job interviews

Also, your original post does seem to do a great job of saying something without saying anything at all, awesome!

@Sun Bin – Thanks for the economist link. Everyone should read that because it clarifies a lot of things.

What is most interesting IMO is to estimate the percentage of Chinese couples that actually go for gender abortion. I review my estimate as follows, according to the Economist data:

1- There are around 16 [121-105] more males than expected for every 100 females, which is roughly 7% [=16/221] of unexpected males.

2- This means that there are 14% families who did illegal gender detection (of which roughly 7 detected male and let it go, and 7 detected female and aborted)

3- Supposing the methods are not so effective, let’s say there is a success rate of 70%. That would mean that 20% [14/0.7] or 1 in 5 families actually tried some gender selection method.

This is really something. I find it difficult to believe it is so common, but if the Economist data is right I don’t see any other solution. When I get some time I would like to review this calculation slowly and post something about it.

Julen, not exactly, it’s a lot more complicated. Not all the “missing girls” can be attributed to abortions. There are abortions, infantiside, abondonment of baby girls (few are later being adopted, some sold to brothels, some die of maltreatment). Also there are quite a lot of families that actually keep their daughters but don’t legally register them (this is also true for many boys). Naturally, there aren’t any hard numbers regarding any of these groups.

@Rachel: Sure, it is definitely not an exact number. It is only a back of the envelope calculation, I plan to do it more carefully later.

All those abandonments/ murders /etc are all cases of unregistered births, and they don’t make it into the UN stats I took from the article. Therefore they are counted in the missing girls, included in the 20% of families who “tried gender selection methods” in my definition..

Now the question is, of those 20%, how many used abortions, and how many are unregistered births. I have strong reasons to think a large majority of them are abortions, if only for common sense, because I refuse to believe such a large percentage of Chinese are monsters who would harm their own born baby. In any case, I will try to justify this assumption more carefully later.

As I say, I am planning to develop this a bit more on my site as soon as I get some time. I am personally very interested in this count, because it says much more about Chinese people than the 121 males/100 females of the UN statistics.

Finally, I apologize to everyone for the sloppy calculations I am doing on this thread, especially in the beginning. I know it is not very serious to pass from a 3% to a 20% result in 24 hours. I am just using the thread as a tool to think aloud and get feedback from others. As I said, my only interest here is to try to find a correct estimate, not to impose my “truth” on others.

I have always thought that most of the non-Chinese pundits who say they care about China actually don’t give a shit about China; they just want to feel good about themselves. Peter Hitchens is just another example of this.

I find the discussions around sex ratio imbalance to be odd because it only focuses on China, as if the one-child policy along with censorship and state suppression is the root cause. The thing is India has the exact same sex-ratio as China, and India is a democracy with much less state censorship and much more freedom.

Personally I believe the reason for the sex ratio imbalance is largely economically related. In places where physical labor is the employment factor for most of the population women are viewed upon as costs to the system. The advancement of technology (ultrasound) just made the choice a lot easier because to most people there is a huge difference between infanticide and abortions. This obvious angle however is almost always ignored when pundits talk about this particular issue in China.

Is expression ever devoid of bias? If you attack people’s bias you attack their right to fully express how they feel about a partiular issue.

All expression is bias on some level. Most expression is completely bias. Your bias leads you to point out Hitchens’ bias within the article as an almost Orwellian attack upon China. Whereas my bias allows me to regard the article as a passionate expression of the author’s feelings and opinions about an important issue.

Oh my, this had me laughing. As I was reading I wondered if your comments and highligts were colour coded…I guess I should have know that they would be.

I find it utterly infuriating that someone as stupid as Peter Hitchens gets paid ridiculous amounts of money to write total shite, while Kai Pan writes wonderfully with real heart and (I’m presuming) doesn’t get paid a penny.

I don’t think enough was made of the fact that the article was written in the Daily Mail. For anyone outside Britain, the DM is seen as a bit of a joke here in the UK. It is very right wing, sensationalist and loves nothing more than writing some holier than thou piece on crime, immigration or something like that. So, in my opinion, this tarnishes Kai Pan’s article slightly.
If Hitchin’s article was written in the Times, the Guardian or the Independent then he may have a just reason to highlight it, but it wasn’t, and it never would be.

Continuing the Discussion

welcome to china/divide

china/divide was a group blog launched March 1, 2010 by three China bloggers: Stan Abrams, Charles Custer, and Kai Pan. Less than three months later, on May 21st, china/divide was blocked by China’s “Great Firewall”, becoming inaccessible to readers in China without proxies or VPNs. Nearly five months later and after a total of 132 published posts, china/divide was quietly disbanded, except for an occasional post or two by Kai when a comment on another site just won’t do.

Kai Pan is a UC Berkeley alumni where he actually studied law and legal systems, currently lives in Shanghai, and was once both an active china/divide blogger and frequent commenter on China and Chinese topics. These days, however, Kai has largely given up the gauntlet and his involvement in the China blogosphere is limited mostly to helping manage operations at chinaSMACK and its growing family of sister-sites including koreaBANG and indoBOOM.